


May It All Seem Plausible

by Chash



Series: Better Ways to Be Alive [5]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Minor Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-13 23:05:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16481468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: October ends in Eden.





	May It All Seem Plausible

**Author's Note:**

> Is it weird to post both of these today? YES. Am I doing it anyway because this is Halloween-themed and November is my month of starting to focus on holiday fills? Also yes. There might be more set in this verse someday, but this is wrapping up for now. Thanks for reading, friends!

"Clarke not being a witch is the worst Halloween surprise ever," Jordan says, with a heavy sigh.

Madi had been looking around the farmer's market for someone with caramel apples, but that snaps her attention to Jordan. "Since when is she not a witch?" she asks, aiming for curious but uninvested. It's an easy joke to share with him, even knowing it's not really a joke; he's never going to catch on.

He nods across the market and Madi follows his gaze to see Clarke leaving Bellamy's stall with a wave.

"I think I'm missing something. What's proving she's not a witch here?"

"They're dating now, right? Witches don't have boyfriends."

"Who says witches don't have boyfriends?" Gaia asks, sparing Madi the trouble. "Why can't they?"

"If witches had boyfriends, why would they need to steal people's firstborns? They could just have their own. Witches don't date, QED."

"So Clarke's grandmother wasn't a witch?" Gaia asks. "She had kids. That's how she's Clarke's grandmother."

This actually gives Jordan pause, and Madi can see the calculations he's doing in his head as he tries to square Clarke's grandmother _clearly_ being a witch with witches not having families.

"Clarke had a girlfriend before," she says, mostly to see if equations will actually appear in front of Jordan's eyes like in those memes. "They broke up before she moved back here."

"Maybe witches just don't want to give birth," Gaia suggests. "I don't blame them. Pregnancy sounds bad."

"She did take me," Madi adds. "So she already has a kid, if she needs one."

Jordan grins. "Is she training you to be a witch or fattening you up to eat you? Those would be good clues."

" _Training to be a witch_ isn't really a clue. That's literally her being a witch and passing on her craft."

"She does feed me," Madi muses, ignoring Gaia's fair and accurate point. "And she says I'm too skinny. When does that cross the line from parental concern to planning to eat me?"

"Good question. Let me know what she tells you about your Halloween candy, that could be helpful." He claps his hands together, gleeful. "Speaking of which, costumes! Are we all set? What are we being?"

"Witch," says Madi, straight-faced.

"Seriously?"

"You inspired me."

"It's just so _pedestrian_ ," he says, with a deep sigh. "Witches. Everyone's a witch."

Madi rolls her eyes. "Sorry I'm letting you down. What are you going to be?"

"He _loves_ Halloween," says Gaia. "He always overdoes it. I'm going to be Okoye from _Black Panther_."

"I don't overdo it, I do it the right amount. I'm going to be a pumpkin spice latte."

"Huh," says Madi, careful. "Like--a cup?"

"Starbucks cup, whipped topping, straw," he says. "You'll see, it's going to be awesome. Dad and I have been putting it together for weeks. We don't have a lot more trick-or-treat years left, I need to embrace them. Dad says you get old and you're too tired to go to parties, so we need to enjoy this while we can."

"Is the trick-or-treating good here?" asks Madi. "I've lived in some neighborhoods where it really sucked."

"There are always going to be some bad houses," says Jordan. "But it's mostly good. And of course we know the best route. We've been doing this for a while."

Gaia's eyes light up. "Hey, you can tell Clarke to get good candy! Her grandmother always had, like--sugar daddies and tootsie rolls and stuff. She said she wanted to give out apples but you weren't allowed to do that anymore."

From what Madi can tell, her grandmother was kind of an asshole, but in that way where she didn't make anyone's life _that_ much worse. She just liked fucking with them.

"I'll let her know, but I think it'll be fine. She said she wants leftovers."

"Is her and Bellamy dating a good thing?" Gaia asks, sounding a little concerned. Madi's not actually sure what she means, not until she adds, "I mean, for you. Is it good?"

"Oh, yeah," says Madi. She smiles. "Honestly, I don't know why it took them so long, they're so gone for each other, it's ridiculous. I can't wait until he moves in and I get all his cats."

"But his house is so cool," says Jordan, wistful. "Who'd want to move out of a cat house and into a creepy haunted witch cottage? No offense."

Madi taps her jaw. "Maybe they can live in Clarke's house and I can have Bellamy's. It's too small for all three of us. But I like the creepy haunted witch cottage. It's cool."

"It's not as creepy inside as I thought it would be," Jordan grants. "But still. Cat house! You can't beat cat house."

"Any house that Bellamy lives in is a cat house." She spots Clarke looking for her and waves, and Clarke waves back, weaving her way through the small crowd toward Madi. "I think I have to go."

Gaia cocks her head. "Go?"

"We're doing Halloween stuff as a family. Decorations, pumpkin carving, I think cookies?" She shrugs, trying not to be too excited or too embarrassed. She's probably too old for this stuff to be fun, but she's never done this stuff before. 

Then again, she should have known better than to think Jordan and Gaia would judge her for this. Jordan is on the record as loving Halloween. "Is that family only?" he asks, eager, and Gaia elbows him.

"It might be, don't just invite yourself over."

"I can check with Clarke," Madi says, scrambling to remember if they were planning to use magic for anything. "But I don't mind if you guys come, if we have enough stuff. The more the merrier, right?"

Clarke says they'll have to get a couple more pumpkins, but says that if Madi wants her friends to come they can. It sounds nice, having her friends over, so they buy five pumpkins and a gallon of apple cider and load everything into Clarke's car to bring home. The house already looks like it's decorated for Halloween--it _always_ looks like it's decorated for Halloween--so Madi didn't think they'd have a lot to do, but Clarke found some decorating tips online and they honestly are pretty fun. They make big spiderwebs out of yarn and ghosts out of sheets and hang them up in the trees, and it actually makes the place _less_ scary. Suddenly it's a fun place for Halloween stuff, instead of an actual haunted house. Like a vampire dressing up as a Pokemon or something.

Bellamy comes after he's cleaned up his stall, making cookie dough while they do their craft projects. They carve their pumpkins while the dough is in the fridge, put them out by the gate, lighting the way into the yard. They cut the cookies into seasonal shapes, ghosts and cats and leaves, and let them cool before they ice them, and it's all so domestic Madi can barely breathe. It's clear that Clarke wanted to give Madi a wholesome, picture-book family activity, but that doesn't make it _bad_. If anything, it's almost better. These things might come about naturally, but Clarke cared enough to plan it out and make it happen for Madi. She wasn't taking any chances.

"Jordan thinks you're not a witch because you're dating Bellamy," she remarks, once Jordan and Gaia have gone home and it's just the family. 

Well, the family _tonight_ , which means her and Clarke and Bellamy, but also Cucurbita, Conditura, several cats who came with Bellamy, one of whom is sticking around enough he probably no longer counts as feral, and the two bunnies that decided they wanted to live in Clarke's yard instead of going back into the woods. 

It's a big family with fairly nebulous boundaries, but Madi knows exactly where she fits into it.

"Wait, what?" asks Bellamy, frowning. "How is this my fault? Is it my fault? Is it bad?"

"He thinks witches can't have boyfriends. There was a reason, not just, like--witches are gross. He figured if witches could have kids of their own, they wouldn't need to ask for first borns."

"Just because I have a boyfriend doesn't mean I can have kids," Clarke says. "Or that I'm going to. Definitely not until we've got you taken care of."

"Yeah," says Bellamy. "Give it a few years, we can see if we need another human kid when we already have Madi and all the cats in the world. But sorry I'm killing your witch cred, I guess."

Clarke shrugs. "No one thought Gram was a witch until my grandfather died. You need to be old and lonely and weird. So far, I'm just weird."

"Did anyone ever think Gram was going to eat Clarke?" Madi asks.

"Uh," says Bellamy, frowning. "What?"

"That was Jordan's other idea. Clarke is fattening me up to eat me."

"Oh, uh--actually, probably, yeah. When she moved in for the first time, we all thought it was a trap or something. But her grandmother was definitely a scary old lady then. Clarke's less scary."

"I'm scary," she mutters, and Bellamy kisses her hair.

"Sure you are."

"Everyone will probably just start thinking you guys are a weird supernatural power couple instead," Madi muses.

"We _are_ a weird supernatural power couple," Clarke points out. "They're not wrong."

"Yeah, we're badass. And scary."

Madi smiles, gives the bunny sitting next to her a scratch behind the ears. They're joking when they say stuff like that, but it's _true_. They're actually really badass, and Madi's working on being badass too. They're going to teach her.

"That reminds me, I want to make my Halloween costume better," she says. "Any ideas?"

"Better how?" asks Bellamy.

"I don't know, cooler? I like the witch stuff, but it sounds like Jordan's costume is really complicated. I don't want it to look like I'm phoning it in."

"I could make you a broomstick," he offers.

"And he could get a cat to sit on it all night."

"Well, hang out, anyway. I can't make a cat sit still for an hour if it doesn't want to, I'm not that good."

"And we could probably do some cool jewelry," Clarke muses. "It'll look like LEDs, but you'll know it's magic. It's more fun that way."

It's not a bigger deal than anything else, no more of a sign of acceptance than the kittens or the bunnies or the iPad or the day of Halloween celebrations. It's just one more thing, another kindness that Clarke and Bellamy do for her without question, without hesitation. Like it's nothing, even though they know it's not nothing. 

It's all those things piling up, her chest swelling with the sure knowledge that they want to make her life better for as long as they can. That they think about it, about her. They want her to be happy and healthy and have nice things, and they're working on it. It's what parents are supposed to do, probably. Make their kids' lives better.

"I bet we could do a magic wand, too," Bellamy says. "I make the wand, you make the sparks."

"Teamwork," says Clarke. "What do you think, Madi? Sound good?"

She smiles, a little too big, but no one seems to mind. "Sounds awesome."

They spend the next day putting together the pieces, Bellamy making the broom and wand, Clarke and Madi enchanting things, tinkering with spells until they have it right, and by the time Halloween rolls around on Wednesday, she's still a witch, but she's a more exciting witch with a bit more style. Both Cucurbita and Conditura want to come, once Bellamy explains what's happening, and Clarke wants to take a billion pictures, and then a billion more pictures of her with Gaia and Jordan, and then they send her off into the night.

"Home by nine," Clarke says, and Madi thinks, _home_.

"Yeah," she says. "I'll be here."


End file.
